25 - Sergei Krikalev

You wake up, it's cold, jesus fucking christ it's cold, colder than you've ever felt before, almost numbing, your face feels fine though, and your eyes adjust, there's a fire in front of you, and some guy sitting on a log, he's got a full face of hair, and he's wearing... Is that a fucking Ushanka? Where are you?

"You know when they sent cosmonauts into space, they gave em guns? No seriously, hear me out, they didn't think there'd be aliens or such, it was just because when they touched down in the middle of Siberia, they didn't want their guys getting eaten by wolves." he speaks casually, as if you were his travelling partner.

You say nothing, and place yourself onto another stump opposite him, your vision feels cloudy.

"Speakin' of cosmonauts, you ever hear about that "Phantom Cosmonaut" stuff? That's bullshit, mostly, so the idea is the Soviets covered up a bunch of dudes who they tried firing into space before Gagarin made it, right, turns out it was two american dudes making stuff up, only reason i say mostly's because of Krikalev."

You hear a howl, and dart your head around, for a brief moment, you stare into the old man's eyes.

"Now Krikalev was one unlucky bastard, real unlucky, not suprised if you hadnt heard of him, someone probably covered this up, anyway, so, Krikalev, unlucky guy, goes up during '91, Guy's in space when communication just dies, right? And He's absolutely shitting himself, guy thinks maybe everything wentnuclear."

The man took his finger and circled his finger around, next to his head"

"Start's going absolutely crazy, thinks he's all alone up there, it's been like a week now, right?

You notice, his beard is dishevelled, and you smell vodka on his breath.

"So, he's a clever guy, you don't get to be a cosmonaut without being pretty clever, and he's amateur radio guy, so Krikalev spends the next couple of days fashioning a radio, personal use right?"

You look at the backpack the old man's carrying, it's ragged, with a crown of what looks like metal junk, with an antenna on top

"Get's past the party, if anyone's still down there, he wants to know, so that's when i get a little signal coming from this ol' girl", the man took his pile of junk and laid it out quite proudly.

"So i'm sitting here, combing through signals, looking for the little green men, and i hear this guy just yelling, and yelling out some pretty serious sounding codes, i thought it was some teenager, and he's wailin', cryin' he says 'Oh my god!, i'm the only one left!' just cuz he was aiming his signal all the way out here, miracle i picked up the signal really"

You feel a lot better by now, the fire's helped massively, but it's still dark, and you still hear rustling and the sounds of nature.

It doesn't sound nice.

"So i rig up this" he says, pointing towards the innards of a microphone, and i say "Baby! Stop crying! I have work to do here!" and i get a message back like lightning "Oh my god, there's still people! This is a happy day Comrade!" and i hear him crying through the static and it's all a happy time for him.

"So Krikalev tells me, tells me about living in space, all he's doing, about how the lines were cut, and he asks me to check the news, and i do., and i walk back to town, and i see the news, and i say 'oh my god, the union is dead!' and i rush back and tell Krikalev, and we sit for a little while, quietly."

You hear another howl, it sounds closer, you raise this point to the old man.

"Ah, don't worry about that, they keep away, anyway, we talk and talk, and for weeks this keeps up! Krikalev's totally cut off from the ground, apart from me, he told me it had something to do with electronic magnets or some such"

The old man looks off into the distance, and you see a tear well in his eye, he stands.

"They left him up there, can you believe it? Left a comrade up there, in that dungeon, to die."

You see his face in the light better now, his skin is leathery, old, wrinkled, and scarred, his ushanka is adorned with the hammer and sickle, and though the rest of his clothes look tattered, that embroideried patch looks as though it's been kept serene.

"I kept in contact with Krikalev until i could no longer, my friend, and in the final few days, i lied to him, i lied to my own working brother, can you imagine? He was devastated, he sat, quiet, for hours at a time, so i told him, i said that the party had taken control back again, and that, that it was getting better, and i said there must be a mistake, and that they'd be back in contact again soon."

tears well in his, you see lumps in his throat in a death struggle, he begins to clear his breath between sentences.

"And he said to me, 'Comrade, thank you for keeping me company, i'm glad to have known you.'"

"And he didn't have to do that! He was a cosmonaut, above everyone! And he talked to a stupid young man who moved into Siberia with delusions about fidning aliens."

The man reached into his bag, and took out a gun, it had three barrels, he was nonchalant about it, but you visibly jumped.

"Comrade, it's for the wolves."

You readjusted onto your stump.

He looked down at the gun.

"I should use it on myself."

He looked away from the gun and back at you.

"You have to hear this before i do."

"I heard Krikalev die, comrade."

"We were talking, as we did, and i heard Krikalev excited, apparently a sensor had picked up a ship trying to dock with his module, and we were both exicted, but in my head i thought 'well, truth catches up to you, i hope he'll forgive me for lying' and such, and Krikalev, poor Krikalev, he lets the bastards on., and i hear it, through the static, i hear them, they said nothing, they stamped with jackboots and they gunned him down, and i presume they smashed his little radio."

he falls back onto his stump, and hangs his head, his ushanka falls, and reveals white, barely remaining hairs.

"They killed him Comrade, they 'cleaned' him like he was a speck of dirt on the road."

His head flung up, he stood and shouted:

"And they had to! Because Krikalev, he was one of the best among us, they can't let people like that live."

Nearby birds scattered.

The creature, roused, returned to it's den of dejection and depression

"They'd cause too much trouble." he sulked

The old man took a posturing tone,

The old man began an even longer speech about marxism, and what he was taught at school, he mixed it with aliens, it was an insane, long rant.

The howls were closer, too close, they couldn't be far at all at this point.

he ended:

"Comrade, i have lived a long and immoral life, i have lived for myself, small dreams and tiny things, but you, you are fresh, you are new in the world." he closed his eyes.

"You can make it better."

The man took the gun.

His tears seemed to recede, his eyes became intense as he grabbed you to the side of your arms:

"Take this gun, fire on the wolves if they come for you, if they are to come for me, i accept my fate, there should be enough rations to get you to Talon, there is some money in the box, unused."

"Comrade, for this i ask two things of you; tell people of Krikalev, and do not stop telling them, whatever happens, whatever falls or rises, whoever you hear with jackboots on radios, or anysuch, you keep telling them, until your lips are like rocks in a desert and your lungs can breathe no more, keep telling them, tell them how they murdered our comrade like this."

You were still confused, completely bewildered, at this point you were convinced it was a dream, or you were dead, or maybe you were the ghost of krikalev, you remembered little of who you were, and it only seemed natural that it should be the case that you somehow knew this man.

but you promised, and you took this old man's things, and you took his gun.

He offered a parting gift, a shared bottle of nearly 50 year old vodka, and he sang the soviet anthem with pride, burning, righteous pride, in the morning, when you awoke, you were alone, you saw a note, with a small map to the tiny village of Talon, and a parting few words

"Comrade, always remember that you are new."

25 - Sergei Krikalev